


The Bake Sale

by clumsyoctopus



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 03:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clumsyoctopus/pseuds/clumsyoctopus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today, the annual Girl Scout bake sale will take place in the High School Cafeteria from 3pm to midnight. Also, Tamika Flynn discovers the joys of peaceful protest, a new Moroccan cafe opens besides the barbershop, and hundreds of small yellow cars are moving towards Night Vale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bake Sale

The circus is in town. You have been to see them many times before. The jugglers are your favourites. The jugglers juggling. Juggling all night and all day. Their fingers worn down to bloody, nail-less threads, and the crowds cheer and they juggle on and on and on, panting, stomachs growling, fingers aching. They are your favourites. Welcome to Night Vale.  
  
Hello, listeners. We’ve got a lot of exciting things happening in our little desert town this week, but let’s just start with today. After all, today is all we have, when tomorrow may not come, and yesterday may never have existed.  
  
At 3pm today, the Night Vale Girl Scouts will be having their annual summer bake sale, this year held in the Night Vale High School Cafeteria. As always, attendance is absolutely mandatory. There will be a 50 cents entry fee, and the cakes and cookies will be priced by the girl scouts themselves. And don’t try to haggle! These girls may be cute, but they have some fierce business acumen. I found this out the other day when I tried to turn down a box of their macaroons at my door. I ended up selling them the top floor of my house, to use for purposes they will and, it seems, cannot not explain.  
  
The Sheriff’s Secret Police and Mayor Winchell will be in attendance, sampling the many goodies the Girl Scouts have on sale. The hooded figures will be closely monitoring attendance, so make sure to show up at some point before midnight tonight, when the final stalls will close! Star Girl Scout and winner of last year’s Scouts Bloodbath Massacre Hunting Trip, 6 year old Abby Heslop had this to say:  
  
“The bake sale is not a bake sale. You know and you will not help us. They’re taking us to the Dog Park. They are taking us to the Dog Park, and they’re going to make us just like them. They are going to do things to us, in the Dog Park. Help us. Please help us. Please stop the bake sale.”  
  
And Abby’s Mommy and Daddy  want to say they’re bringing their homemade red velvet cake to the sale, priced at a dollar a slice. Hear that, listeners? Mrs Heslops’s infamous Red Velvet Cake! Deeeelish. I might ask Carlos to bring a slice to the station for me, because you just know there’ll be none left by the time I get down there!  
  
Now get down to the high school and enjoy your absolutely mandatory bake sale.  
  
Now on this hot, hot, _hot_ summer day in our hot desert town, it can be easy to get cranky and let our spirits go down the drain. So we should take the chance to appreciate what we have. For instance, if you are an honoured member of the Sheriff’s Secret Police, you have air conditioning. If you are anyone else, you have our government-issued, standardised and perfectly normal electric fan, which has been nailed down to your kitchen floor overnight. The fan does not contain any hidden cameras. The fan’s blades are not gleaming, or malicious, or even all that sharp. That’s just the heat talking! The fan is your friend, and you should appreciate how he endlessly and thanklessly toils to cool your home, and protect you from the evils of heatstroke. And you think that maybe he’s making it hotter? Or plotting against you? Or spying on you? You are a _monster_.  
  
But, of course, you know that. You know you are inhuman and cruel and hateful. That is something you came to terms with long ago! Most of the time you forget.  
  
In other local events, a new Moroccan café has opened on the high street! It’s right next to the barbers, and across the road from the post office. It opened just last night, with a groaning almost like the street was yawning open to let it push its way into our town, like a tooth growing in a shark’s mouth.  
  
Carlos, the dear perfect scientist, however, argues that hey, it has been there for ages, you were raving about the coffee there just this weekend, Cecil, you go there on your lunch break all the time, what are you talking about? Hahaha, he sure is a hoot, isn’t he, listeners?  
  
The new café does not seem to have a name. Or at least, not one any human being is capable of pronouncing. The sign is an incomprehensible, sprawling and squirming matrix of symbols. If one tries to read it out loud, the most they can mange is a feral, angry scream. Like, the scream of a man who has lost so much to be reduced to a howling, whimpering animal, an animal that wants to rip flesh with its teeth, feel flesh blood dribbling down its chin.  
  
On Wednesday, the café does this really great deal for lunch! You can get a coffee and a tasty stuffed flatbread for just three dollars and a swab of your cheek. The flatbreads there look amazing, and according to me according to Carlos, the coffee there is just great. So treat yourself to a nice lunch on your break next Wednesday at the café which has a name I am not capable of pronouncing without losing my mind!  
  
And now, traffic.  
  
A great quantity of bee-like yellow cars seem to be heading south-west into Night Vale. If you need to get back into town, prepare for a long wait in a jam of some very ugly cars! According to those working on the roads at the moment, the cars seem to be humming, and appear not to have wheels, and while they are moving very slowly, they seem to be moving with the same purpose in their shared little car-ish minds.   
  
Otherwise, it should be smooth sailing for drivers in Night Vale today! I do like being able to give good news, dear listeners. I hope no matter where you’re driving, you’ll listen to me for as far as my humble little radio tower will transmit. Remember to call in if you notice any suspicious activity on the roads, unless, of course, the suspicious activity has something to do with the things we are not allowed to speak about. Since we’re not allowed to speak about it, of course, I can’t really say what they are, but we all know them anyway, don’t we!  
  
Oh! We have an update on the Bake Sale! Hero of the Summer Reading Week incident Tamika Flynn has began loudly protesting the sale, standing atop a stack of Girl Scout Cookie Boxes, with a megaphone in hand. Witnesses have described 12 year old Tamika as wide-eyed and raving, her teeth flecked with blood and a necklace of tiny rat skulls around her neck. Witnesses have also described her as gentle and wise, like a tiny Messiah in a Hello Kitty shirt. Some of these witnesses are the same people.  
  
Tamika’s parents have called into the station to say that Tamika may be on a bit of a sugar high, and they personally just blame the great quantity of books she’s consuming lately, despite multiple efforts at re-education and de-education from both themselves and the state. They say Tamika is just going through a phase, and they beg for the community to forgive and be patient with her.  
  
Mayor Winchell is still at the scene of the bake sale, and has been quoted describing Tamika as “barbaric” and “unruly” and “for God’s sake Tamika, please stop pounding your fists into those cakes and come have a Thin Mint”.  
  
Well I, unlike some in our community, applaud Tamika’s very all-American decision to exercise her right to protest at such a young age. Unlike some in our community, like known communist STEVE CARSLBURG, still believe in democracy. We should as the whole of the village raising Tamika, encourage her passion, her outspokenness, and her ability to think.  
  
Isn’t it, after all, the duty of the young, to fuss and argue and fight the inevitably futile battle for change? That is, before their hopes and spirits are crushed by the ceaseless monotony and drudgery of life, and their IQ stunted by the chemicals and pollutants the government so wisely decided to put in all of our water. Shouldn’t they have the chance to hold their heads and their fists up high before they become one with the cynical and quietly unhappy masses, and are submitted to the bake sale. Every year going to buy and eat fat, syrupy, and strangely tasteless confectionaries, all just trying to fill that whole that grows wider,

wider

and wider

and   
  
                                           w i d e r  
  
w i i i i i iii iii i i d e . . .

 

Oh, hey! Tamika has Tweeted a picture of her little protest, and it is _adorable!_   
  
She and a few of the converted Girl Scouts have built a barricade out of tables, chairs, and members of the Night Vale High School Football Team. They are armed to the teeth with smiles, rosy cheeks, sawed off shotguns, and a whole load of spirit. Go get ‘em girls.  
  
She also encourages residents of Night Vale to follower her Twitter account, where she posts about literature, school, the liberation of all of Night Vale, and the trials and tribulations of just being 12 years old. I have been skimming over it and she is quite the little writer! Go give our future little poet laureate some support, folks.   
  
It’s important in Night Vale to foster the talent we have, isn’t it? Whether they are 12 year old anarchists, five headed dragons with fantastic blogs, or local tarantulas who have been working their hardest to get out of the hood. No matter where someone comes from or what they’ve been through or who they are, everyone has their own unique experiences, so everyone’s art, and art is anything, is worth more than the money you can put to it.   
  
  
**[And now, the weather!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGDrN7j6esY)**

  
  
Well, listeners, Mayor Winchell has once again showed her yellow belly to us! She has ordered the Sheriff’s Secret Police to take Tamika home, disassemble her barricade, and free the quarter back she was using as a podium. Isn’t that just convenient, folks? We have a clever political mind in our midst, admittedly one who’s only turned twelve a few months ago, and our Mayor wants to shut it down, likely for fear of the threat to her own career!  
  
Are you not ready to take on a child in a debate Mayor Winchell? That is, undoubtedly, the question on every voting Night Vale citizen’s lips at the moment. Mayor Winchell has refused to offer comment, merely mumbling something not to be repeated on radio, and swallowing a few aspirins.  
  
However, Mrs Heslop has informed us that the bake sale, even with all this enthralling political warfare, has beaten last year’s record and raised 150 dollars already! Well done, girls, and well done Night Vale. Good money for a good cause. Let’s see if we can get that to 200 before the day is over!  
  
Make sure before you leave the bake sale, that you cast your vote for Crown Princess Girl Scout, who will be of course, ritualistically sacrificed at the end of the day’s events, to appease the Scout Gods of Old. Remember Night Vale, play fair, and don’t just cast your vote for your niece or your daughter, rather vote for the girl who deserves it the most.  
  
Make sure to enjoy yourselves, but not over the government allotted joy permitted to you this week. Remember, we are in a joy drought, so think about the strain on your neighbour’s joy supply when you’re smiling needlessly this week!  
  
With that, I bid you a good night, and sleep well.  Stay tuned for the two hours of children attempting to breathe underwater, recorded by that man you were warned about when you were small. Good night, Night Vale, good night.


End file.
